On average, full-time employees spend more than one workday per week on low-value activities, such as manual repetitive tasks, according to Stepstone’s 2024 survey.

Such significant waste of work hours can lead to high staffing costs and reduced business profitability. Luckily, a company can avoid overspending on labor costs by automating manual, time-consuming processes via robotic process automation.

There are currently numerous use cases of RPA, with the technology applied to automate a wide range of front- and back-office processes. This article will help you define the most suitable RPA applications for your company.

What Is Robotic Process Automation And Why Adopt It?

Robotic process automation implies deploying software bots to handle tasks usually performed by humans. Traditional RPA bots are only able to execute simple rule-based activities and process structured data. Bots that are complemented with AI, on the other hand, are capable of more intelligent automation, such as handling high-value tasks or processing information without a clear structure or fixed format. 

As already mentioned, RPA can help a company cut labor costs and reduce overall operating expenses. Those respondents to the Automation Scorecard 2024 survey from Bain who invested at least 20% of their IT budgets in automation between 2022 and 2023 achieved 22% in cost savings on average. Enhanced employee morale and satisfaction is another notable advantage of RPA, with 58% of respondents to the 2023 Automation Generation report from UiPath saying that RPA helped them address employee burnout. 

How To Determine Processes For RPA Automation

Identifying work processes suitable for automation is the critical step in any RPA adoption journey. Not only does it help companies clarify where to start with RPA, but it also estimates potential technology impact on their businesses. To define the right processes for automation, you can take the following steps:

1. Map out work processes

To determine potential RPA use cases, a company should start by identifying bottlenecks in its processes, and here, different workflow mapping techniques can come in handy. Their use enables an RPA team to get a better picture of how a business operates and what its process flow generally looks like. They can also help an RPA team understand how to apply RPA so that technology provides meaningful improvements.

In short, workflow mapping involves visualizing all the steps required to execute a process (creating a purchase order, routing a customer call, generating a tax report, etc.), all inputs and outputs that make up a process, and all connections between different processes. A company can visualize its processes by using workflow charts and diagrams, such as swim lane diagrams or value chain diagrams.

Once the mapping is done, it is vital to review workflow maps with process owners and associated employees to ensure everyone agrees on how the workflows are depicted and that no critical process steps are missed. After workflow maps are approved, a company can proceed with them to the more detailed work process audit.

2. Run a comprehensive work process audit

The next essential step is to review the mapped-out workflows and identify ones that should be optimized with RPA foremost. These should meet the following criteria (in case a company is planning to deploy traditional RPA solutions for its first automation):

• They are repetitive and time-consuming
• They are error-prone
• They follow clear rules
• If they involve data processing, the information should be structured 

To understand which ones can match these criteria, an RPA team working on the project can first turn to stakeholders, namely process owners and employees, or hold a series of workshops with representatives of its different departments. During these meetings, they need to ask employees which of their routine tasks take more time and effort and are most error-prone.

As a result of such workshops, the company will get a list of potential automation use cases. They should be studied in more detail from an objective and unbiased perspective, and this is where the project team should use business process data analytics. 

One of the ways to analyze business processes is to conduct a time audit or observe how much time employees spend on specific activities during a certain period. An RPA implementation team can perform a comprehensive time audit by using AI-powered time-tracking software that can automatically capture the time an employee spends to execute a task regardless of its complexity and size.

Process mining is another business process analysis technique that can come in handy. It involves investigating digital traces related to event logs from different software systems used by the company (CRM, ERP, DMS, etc.). An RPA team can use different process mining software, such as UiPath Process Mining or Blue Prism Process Intelligence, for this task.

By analyzing event log data, an RPA team can determine the exact execution time of each step included in any of a company’s processes, as well as identify workflow inefficiencies and bottlenecks.

3. Conduct a feasibility analysis

After the company has identified the most time-consuming and error-prone processes that should be optimized foremost, it should determine the technical feasibility of automating these processes. The reason is that some operations are harder to automate compared to others (for instance, processes that are based on more complex business rules or involve multiple systems and apps). These processes can require more complex automation and increased effort from an RPA team.

At the same time, a company should assess the economic feasibility of process automation to calculate the cost of RPA deployment against the expected business benefits (cost reduction, revenue increase, etc.). Those processes that are considered most technically and economically feasible should be selected as the primary automation candidates for a company’s first RPA project.

At the same time, a company should assess the economic feasibility of process automation to calculate the cost of RPA deployment against the expected business benefits (cost reduction, revenue increase, etc.). Those processes that are considered most technically and economically feasible should be selected as the primary automation candidates for a company’s first RPA project.

Conclusion

Investing in robotic process automation can help your company free up employees from repetitive tasks in order to reduce labor costs and improve overall business performance. You can use the algorithm described in the article to assess the suitability of your work processes for automation and identify ones that should be streamlined foremost.

You can also turn to professional RPA experts in order to build an RPA Proof of Concept and ensure the feasibility of automation in practice and with the minimum risk. After validating your RPA project idea, third-party experts can guide you through all RPA implementation stages and provide technical assistance with bot development, deployment, and testing.